By While the excitement of CES has come over everyone this week, one firm is having to start 2013 off on a sour note. HTC has posted its worst profit numbers since 2004 as the company only generated only $34.5 million in profit in Q4 2012. It may be difficult to feel sorry for a company that’s still posting a profit, but the arrow has been pointing at a bit of a downward angle for a little while now.
HTC first started feeling pains back in late 2011 when the industry began to accelerate at an alarming rate. The company wasn’t in much trouble then, but Samsung had quickly become the “the one” in the Android space, and the allure of HTC’s brand was beginning to fade. To combat this, HTC’s One series was introduced in early 2012 and it looked to restore that sense of innovation that’s always been associated with the Taiwanese OEM.
Results weren’t expected to be better overnight, of course, but it seems HTC’s efforts only slowed the bleeding. HTC went from making $133 million in Q3 to this point, and this same quarter last year netted the company over $300 million. These trends are no doubt troubling, and if HTC doesn’t do anything to steal some thunder back from the now-unstoppable Samsung then the landscape of the smartphone industry will look drastically different by the time 2014 hits.
HTC’s DROID DNA wasn’t fully accountable in these numbers as the device launched in the middle of the quarter, but even if it does well I’m not sure HTC can survive on the performance of one phone. You also have to consider the presence of AT&T’s HTC One X+.
CEO Peter Chou has already conceded that the company isn’t in a great spot right now, but he hopes a planned surge of marketing will help restore brand awareness, image and excitability as it looks to climb back into a respectable position among the greats of the smartphone world.
[via WinSource]
HTC released the One series that was supposed to be their one series (pun intended).
And then released another dozen phones in the US, 2 dozen in china, and a handful in Europe and South America.
HTC knows exactly what is wrong and they had the right idea, but then they did the same old things.
If HTC had done what it said it would do at the beginning of Q1 2012, there may be a different story here. However, instead of one device in 3 tiers everywhere, we got the One X, One XL, One X+, One S, One V, One SV, One XV, Evo 4G LTE, Droid DNA, and possibly more. That’s at least 3 times their stated goal.
HTC, I’d love to see an M3, M5, M7 everywhere this year.
Well, it’s better than previous years… Plus HTC has to sell to the carriers, not to the consumer directly… So it depends on the carrier’s needs and the demand a product has. Here’s hoping for the M3, M5 & M7 to be successful, and the only devices available from HTC… lol
I understand they have to listen to carriers, but the carriers are killing them. They need to make a compromise somewhere.
HTC needs to do what they say and start one line of phones and not let the carriers dictate what they do with the phone. Make a standard line and push it out to all carriers like Samsung has done with it’s galaxy and note line.
you contradicted yourself. HTC let carriers dictate but Samsung didn’t? No. HTC put out good hardware with crappy support, plastic cases, horrible batteries and a lack of real updates per phone. They kick phones out the door and move on.
Someone needs to send a memo to them that locking up their bootloader tighter than you would your daughter if you caught her earning tips on bourbon street is bad for business
They provide a tool on their website that allows you to unlock your bootloader. http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader
what they actually do is spy on you by doing it that way, why not do it like Samsung does? they want to know who is unlocking their devices so they put them on a out of warranty list.
If they had Droid DNA on Tmo, I’d have paid extra for early upgrade. Who wants to switch these days for a phone.
yeah with what 5 customers actually on tmo? not really worth it. Who wants to switch these days.. ask iphone users. Case closed.
1.9million iPhone users on tmobiles network, T-mobile doesn’t even provide the iPhone for subsidization or even being sold on a plan, you fail in life. Not only is there that but if it wasn’t for them taking the leap into Android your comment probably wouldn’t even be on this website because if they didn’t take the chance nobody else would have. Case Re-Opened and Gorilla Glued shut. Now go on and troll some other board before I call your parents.
I don’t get why Tmobile doesn’t get the credit they deserve. HTC, Google and Tmobile or its the iphone,Windows Mobile maybe Rim maybe Webos. Right now the Nexus 4 gets hspa+ 42 only on Tmobile in the states.
what are you six? still don’t know how to count? i am sure you are just as stupid as htc.
Do you usually pull answers out of your ass? The company I work for has 400 employees and almost half of us are handed T-Mo sims or company phone with it.
The need ONE main device here in the U.S. as well as other countries. The “M7” or One X2. That’s it as far as their main smartphone.
Maybe htc should not release their main phone before their competitor’s and wait to see where the market is heading.
They released the one x with only 1gb of ram and there was no way for it to compete with the s3. They then release the one x+ with minimal spec updates when it should have been the dna with a micro sd slot.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure this stuff out, you can’t compete with Samsung if your product isn’t as good. Their specs can’t even compete with lg’s top of there line phones at the moment other than the dna and that’s only on one carrier that limited it to 16gb of storage to make their customers use more data.
I hope htc releases about 20 different models this year… This will help them.
This is why profits matter, fandroids….and marketshare doesn’t :-)
I’ll let samsung know that their marketshare is not making them massive profits. Bet they will be surprised.
Over 500 different Android OEM’s and exactly ONE making significant profits (which despite its marketshare lead, is DWARFED by Apple)….what a great business model (o_O)
Your hyperbole is fun to you I’m sure, but it’s a classic troll method. Pretty much kills every bit of your credibility. That is, if your name, statements, and the website you choose to make them on don’t do that already.
Translation: I don’t have a valid response…
Take a leaf out of the Google Nexus – (not the shambles part) but make a nice phone & sell it cheap, dirt cheap. HTC are a respected brand so people would know they wouldn’t just be buying tat. There is huge demand for the Nexus so it could get them back on the map.
The problem I have with non-Nexus phones is crappy vendor UI and lack of updates.
It seems manufacturers are still in the “feature phone” mindset of churning out devices and forgetting about them.
HTC needs to ditch Sense, lower their offering to 3 phones max (or similar enough variants) each year and commit to 2-4 years of software updates depending on the range of phone (budget/mid/high).
HTC needs a flagship device on all the major US carriers. And to promote it. If they can do that and get it out before the GS4 it will be a hit. The only reason the One X didnt take off is because they limited it to one carrier. Its been almost a year and its still available to only one US carrier. Thats their main problem, availability.